[Technology Tuesday] Ebay: On the Way Out?

It’s hard to believe, but eBay has been around for almost 15 years now. Granted, most people didn’t know about eBay until it went public in 1998, and it didn’t really become a household name until a few years ago. There’s no denying that eBay has been popular successful; it’s been called the savior of direct sales, the first major consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace, and even the future of business as we know it.

But if eBay’s so great, why is it struggling to convince everyone it’s still relevant?

I ran across an article in Business Week last month that’s got me thinking that eBay is not only starting to become irrelevant, but that it’s a sign of the changes in the way people are using the Internet. It’s bad news for eBay, honestly, because if I’m correct, there’s really no way out for them. They’re going to have to let their core business shrink and focus on other business units if they want to survive. According to the article, eBay has already realized that its side businesses, like Skype and Paypal, have the potential to be profitable on their own.

But chances are good those businesses are going to go down with the lumbering dinosaur that has become eBay unless changes happen, and fast.

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[Technology Tuesday] Why I Don’t Twitter

Yesterday, I mentioned that I’m taking a break from Internet “chatter” by avoiding commenting on large forums and ignoring my Facebook account entirely. But don’t think this is the first time I’ve waged a personal war against wasting time with Internet “chatter”. Last year, I decided to stop using Internet chat services like AIM, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger because I realized I was wasting far too much time instant messaging people. And I’ve been avoiding Twitter like crazy, because, in my mind, it represents the absolute worst things that social networking has to offer.

Allow me to explain… though it will take me more than 140 characters, I’m afraid.

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[Technology Tuesday] The Cry of the Consumer For Fewer Features

Laptops would be so much easier for novices to use if they weren't developed to do so much!

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have a Blackberry Storm, and I love it — this little device can do so many things that I’m finding myself using my laptop less and less for routine tasks like checking email or goofing off on Facebook, and finding myself anchoring my laptop to a desk more frequently.

Aside from those two devices, I have a PSP that I’ve loaded custom firmware onto, giving me a dedicated entertainment platform that can play so many games that I really have no need for the vast array of video game equipment I have. That means that between three pieces of hardware, I can have more functions than I know what to do with — and every week, I’m finding a new and novel use for one of them.

In the tech industry, one of the big buzzwords over the last ten years has been “convergence” — the idea that as technology evolves, there’s going to be less of a need for multiple devices and that more and more emphasis will be placed on using a single device for all of our technological needs. Right now, it appears that that device is going to be the cellular phone, though it’s possible that once long-distance wi-fi towers are a standard, VOIP will replace cellular technology entirely. In another decade, wireless networking will probably be everywhere, at a price that puts today’s rates to shame. And we’ll all be using a small portable device to take advantage of it instead of the bulky notebook computers we lug around today.

But there’s a downside to technology — the tendency to add new features to products that are already doing a pretty good job. It’s not enough to put out a nice product and leave it alone anymore — every new model has to include some improvement over the past model, even if it doesn’t make sense. We’re rapidly approaching a time when the cry of the consumer is not going to be for more, but for less. And it could happen sooner than you’d think…
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[Technology Tuesday] Sony Needs to Learn How to Be Better At Marketing

Why is this system selling so poorly? Bad marketing, that's why.

2008 was a banner year for Sony — they won the format war with Toshiba and cemented Blu-Ray as the next generation of storage media, they released two killer app games for their Sony Playstation 3 game console (Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Little Big Planet) and they saw two great pieces of software push PSP sales in Japan (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Final Fantasy Dissidia). The PS2 continues to sell strongly around the world. They continued to perform well in other consumer electronics markets as well with their TVs, digital cameras, and music players. Sony has always been good at making cool products, and from a design standpoint, they’re still going strong.

So why is Sony suddenly posting a $1.1 billion loss? I’d argue it’s because they’re so good at design that they neglect their marketing. And I’m not just talking about their advertising, either, but their entire philosophy of how products are developed for public use.

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[Technology Tuesday] – An Honest Look at the Blackberry Storm

I don't think I'd want a tiger staring back at me on MY Blackberry...

I don’t get excited about gadgets too often these days – they come out far too frequently, and they’re often too expensive to be worth my while. But as I began to experience some frustration with my Palm Treo 650 smartphone, I also found myself growing enamored with the Blackberry Storm – a Blackberry device with a touchscreen. And somehow, that excitement translated into my standing in line to get one on the day it came out.

I got my Treo 650 four years ago when I decided I needed an e-mail-capable phone. At the time, I wasn’t too impressed with the Blackberry devices – they had just recently started coming with color screens, and they seemed light years behind some of the other phones on the market in terms of features. The Palm Treo, on the other hand, was easy to customize and to modify, and it could function as an all-in-one media player to boot. I could even turn it into a cellular modem for my laptop with little fuss. That seemed like a good enough reason to me to make it my smartphone of choice.

But the Treo and I developed something of a love/hate relationship as the years went by, mostly due to an inconvenient glitch in the design of the headphone jack, which broke very easily and forced me to always use a headset in order to use the phone. I also hated the Treo’s web browser and its default email clients. I was getting annoyed with the stylus pen, too, since it was constantly slipping out of the phone and nearly getting lost for good.

So, I was ready for a change. There were lots of new smartphones on the market, but there was an obstacle in the way…. Read more »